


denouement

by katsidhe



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Disturbing Themes, Emdash Overuse, Gen, Horror, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 11:07:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14519178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katsidhe/pseuds/katsidhe
Summary: Sam’s dreaming that nothing hurts.





	denouement

**Author's Note:**

> Canon-divergent and set sometime in mid-s13, before 13.17. 
> 
> I wrote this for the Hurt vs. Comfort birthday meme over at ohsam. 
> 
> This is my first brief stab at something so... weird, so let me know how it worked?

_Sam’s dreaming that nothing hurts._  

 

* * *

 

The Impala is rumbling down a forest road, aspen trees either side, shafts of dappled sunlight playing along the asphalt. Somewhere, a bird trills. 

Sam looks to his left. There’s Dean, humming to a song on the radio. When he grins over at Sam, it’s as if he’s lost ten years. The wind rustles through the trees. It’s a beautiful day—

Cas is a warm weight beside him. Sam’s bedside clock reads 2:44 AM, and they’re watching  _Orphan Black_. Cas frowns at something, opens his mouth for some kind of protest or clarification, but Sam's too busy laughing—

Jess tosses golden hair over her shoulder and smiles down at him, delightfully wicked. He’s sprawled under her on their bed. She’s gorgeous. They have the entire weekend to themselves. She leans down to whisper something in Sam’s ear—

Dean, young and unscarred, pulls out the cooler. It’s a starry night, crisp and serene. Sam’s breath fogs in the cool air. Dean drags out two beers, hands one to Sam, clinks the necks. Sam follows him onto the hood of the Impala. He takes a long, slow drink. Dean grins sideways at him—

Amelia gives him a crooked smile. They’ve finished eating, but the spring day is still young. The field buzzes with crickets. Riot is curled lazily on the picnic blanket—

Jody’s sending Claire a stern look. Dean’s hogging the mashed potatoes. Alex rolls her eyes and steals the spoon to put a scoop on Sam’s plate—

Rowena winks at him from across a low table in a dark, smoky room. A manicured nail traces along spiky lettering in a book older than the Roman empire. Her eyes glow violet and roll back into her skull—

Jack’s laughing, gesturing, he’s showing Sam how he can string a chain of paperclips together and float them ‘round the room—

Mom’s here, alive, and she’s staring right at him, a wild tender impossible look—

 

_—sun, air, trees._ The blare of a truck horn, violent whiplash, screeching, a solid wall of shock and pain and noise, and when he manages to crack open one eye, he can’t move. His legs are a mass of confused agony. There’s a jagged, throbbing pain in his abdomen. He looks down at his hands, slippery with blood, fumbling at the iron bar stuck through his gut, at the twisted, crunched metal pinning everything below.

Sam turns his head up. Dried blood crackles on his cheek. “Dean?” His voice comes out a tiny ragged croak. 

He smells smoke. He looks back down, and through one slitted eye, he follows a spark drifting lazily through the sunny air. It spins, tilts this way and that and alights like a butterfly on his sleeve. He tries to brush it off, but his arms have stopped responding. “Dean!” 

“Eyes up here,” says Dean. He squats down into view. He’s covered in blood. One ear and part of his nose is gone. His arm is twisted the wrong way. 

“Dean, Dean,” gasps Sam. “Help.” His sleeve is catching. The heat is beginning to hurt. 

His brother leans over, studying Sam’s arm, the way the flame is eating hungrily, sinking in. Dean sighs. He sounds sad. “What have I told you about listening to NPR?"

Dean pulls out a flask. Water. Thank god. He pours it over Sam’s face, like he’s washing off the blood, like he’s anointing him—oh, not water. Oil. Dean shakes the rest of the flask onto Sam’s arm, then stands up and steps back. 

_—Cas, warm, Netflix._ Cas embraces him, then slides his hand into Sam's chest. “You’re okay,” he says, while Sam screams and screams.

— _Jess, young, free._ Her breath tickles his ear, a little laugh, and then she’s twisting a knife under Sam’s ribs, twisting and twisting, then yanking him upright and pinning him to the ceiling with invisible, impossible strength.

_—stars, night, Impala._  The beer tastes odd, a sweet coppery aftertaste. Dean’s drink sits untouched. The world does a slow, blurring loop, and the stars slide out of focus. Dean catches Sam as he starts to slide off the car. “Hey, hey, you’re okay," he says. "Eyes up here.”

“Help,” says Sam, muzzily. 

“I’m sorry,” says Dean. He presses a firework against Sam’s cheek and lights the fuse. 

—Amelia shakes her head and reaches up to peel off her face. She scoffs, then buries the breadknife in Sam’s heart.

_—_ Sam stands up from Jody’s table, against his will, and grips Claire’s forehead. “Wait. Sam, Sammy, are you okay?” asks Dean. Claire doesn’t pull away, because she can’t. Sam burns her eyes out. He turns to Jody and Alex, who are staring at him, horrified, and raises his hand—

“Sam, keep the pressure on—"

_—_ A horrible pain flares in Sam’s chest, but he can’t move or breathe. Rowena leans forward, laying her hands against his heart, and then she’s ripping something away, a light so blinding and an agony so awful that Sam wishes he could scream. 

“I’m sorry,” she says.   

“—I’m sorry!” Jack’s eyes glow yellow. A beam of bright energy throws Sam back against a pillar. He feels his ribs snap like sticks of kindling.

 “—Sammy, are you okay?” Mom’s staring at him, concerned. She shoots him in the thigh. She and Toni Bevell drag him up the bunker stairs, leaving an uneven trail of blood behind. 

“Hey, hey, you’re okay.” Dean pulls him into a rough, solid embrace— 

“—Eyes up here.” Dean brings down the hammer. Sam’s tied to the chair, and when his kneecap shatters he screams—

Cas sticks needles into his brain, under his fingernails, into his eyes—

Dean’s eyes flare black and he forces Sam to choke on a vial of something thick and red and dark—

 

* * *

 

An abrupt flood of light blinds him, the brilliance a physical thing.

Sam stumbles back and covers his eyes, dropping to his knees, and suddenly, like a bucket of clear, cold water dumped over his head, he remembers. He remembers—he knows—the knife, he’d been bleeding—Dean—and he’d been distracted, hadn’t even noticed until—

 

_“What have I told you about listening to NPR, huh? You need to improve your taste in—”_

_“Wait. Sam, Sammy, are you okay?"_

_“Hey, hey, you’re okay.”_

_“Eyes up here."_

_“Sam, keep the pressure on—“_

_“I’m sorry—"_

 

He’s dead. He’s dead. 

It’s over. 

_Sam’s not dreaming. Nothing hurts._

It’s finally over.

 

* * *

 

Gradually, the light dims. He lifts his head and chances a look. He’s kneeling in a white room. 

There’s a figure on a white throne, still too bright to make out. Sam squints, trying to see. 

“Sorry about the outsourcing, I’ve been a bit occupied.”

Sam stops breathing. The air drops twenty degrees.

Lucifer's sprawled in the throne of Heaven. He grins. “But I’ll make it up to you. Welcome to the afterlife, Sam!"

**Author's Note:**

> ....Happy 35th birthday, Sam. I'm, um, really really sorry?
> 
> Anyway, the prompt for this was: "Sam finds out who's running heaven these days. The hard way."


End file.
